French 7th Army Corps - May 10, 1940

Task & Position

The 7th Army corps was positioned in the area West of the Swiss border. Its task under Plan H was, to reinforce the position of the Swiss division Gempen (which was more or less a delaying force, which had to hold critical terrain).

Order of Battle

The VII Corps d'Armée (7e CA) consisted of two infantry divisions and one motorized brigade. It was reinforced with a pioneer regiment and a motorized heavy artillery regiment.

The infantry formations were of different quality:

• The 13e Division d'Infanterie (DI) seems to have been a good outfit. Well trained and well equipped. It had 32 47mm AT guns, 36 75mm guns, 12 105mm guns and 12 150mm guns.
• The 27e Division d'Infanterie de Montagne (DI) was not in a very good shape. It had only 60% of its cadre, horses and trucks were missing. It had only 12 47mm AT guns.
• On the other hand, the 2e Brigade Spahi (BS) was an excellent motorized infantery unit. But it had no artillery and only 10 25mm AT guns.

Based on my sources ([Nafziger] and France 1940) there were no tanks allocated to the 7e CA. This is in contrast with the Swiss source [Senn97], but probably reflects reality better, since the Swiss source also has another view of the quality of the 27e DIM.

[Last Update 30.08.2010]